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What’s your plan?

I spend a lot of my time plotting. Often the plots are harmless, sometimes they’re useful or even positive, like plotting out my day or scheming with my children to do something special for the best mom on Earth on Mother’s Day. Human beings are born to plot. We are always trying to map out one part or another of the future.

I will have to admit, though, that I don’t spend much time plotting how to get to Heaven. While my next promotion or my financial retirement get hours of think time and pages of spreadsheet “what-ifs,” Heaven is treated as more of an ad hoc thing. I take being a faithful Christian on a day-by-day, moment-by-moment basis.

Is that right or wrong? I can’t decide. I know that God asks me to be faithful, and that Jesus opened the door to Heaven for me 2,000 years before I was born. Eternal life is a gift that God wants us to simply accept; we don’t earn it. The books of the Bible are filled with the clear message that God has our tomorrows covered for us, and that we should not fear or worry. In fact, fear is a warning sign that your faith has sprung a leak. And isn’t planning just a natural reaction to the fear of an uncertain future?

But do we need a Heaven Plan? Should we be plotting our good works, and our prayer time, and our study? Or should we be focused solely on living in the moment? Is living our best Christian life right now, in this chair, covered with this blanket (because I live in Wisconsin, where it apparently is going to be winter forever!!!) all that really matters?

Maybe being part of the body of Christ is not a journey at all. Maybe Christianity needs to describe HOW we do things, not WHAT we do. There’s no need to plan because everything we do should be pleasing to God, or we shouldn’t do it. We can’t plan for the end of our Earthly life because we really don’t know when it will come. And, more importantly, if our “how” is right, then the “when” doesn’t make any difference at all.

One thought on “What’s your plan?”

WOW!!! You said that in a totally awesome way! You are right, we cannot earn our way to heaven, we just have to accept Jesus/God as our Father and Savior and He will do the rest. No matter how many good deeds we do….it’s nice that we do them, it’s being a Christian, but it doesn’t get us to Heaven. It’s a really hard concept to accept, but it’s the truth, God tells us that in the Bible over and over.
So my take on it is this, keep reading the Bible, keep the faith, keep being a good christian, and keep praying. We may not think He hears us, and boy I can atest to that, but Bill Hybels in his book Gods Whispers (great book btw) says He hears us.